100% D

November 10, 2008 12:35 am

IN AMERICA last week, the Grand Old Party got a drubbing. In New England it got extinction, at least of the species called House Republicans. The loss of Rep. Chris Shays in Connecticut will mean that in the next House of Representatives, only Democrats will represent that state, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

"Big tent" politics are usually cheered, but ideological acceptability in New England fits in a pup tent with enough room left over to sleep a blue whale. Mr. Shays often enraged fellow Republicans by supporting abortion, but not gun, rights; authoring campaign-finance legislation, and sounding warnings about climate change. He did, however, back the president's war policy in Iraq. That evidently sealed his Election Day fate.

Yet New Englanders seem nonpartisan in their intolerance of deviation from left-think. In 2006, Connecticut D's dumped Sen. Joe Lieberman, a stout liberal who even so seeks victory in Iraq, forcing him to run as an independent.